Pastors, Mondays, & Sad Stats.

It's been said that 1 hr. of preaching is equivalent to 8 hrs. of manual labor. If that's true, I did about 12 hours of manual labor yesterday, preaching a 40 min. sermon at our two worship services. No wonder preaching makes me tired.Research has shown that after this day of extremely public manual labor, many pastors fall into a depression. Some even quit their jobs. More pastors resign on Mondays than any other day of the week. You've got to watch out for the post-preaching blues.(Update: some of the comments below suggest that by this post I was expressing my struggles with the post-preaching blues. Just to be clear, that's not a particularly common issue for me. My aim in this post is simply to make us aware of some of the difficulties experienced by some pastors so that congregations can better understand, support, and pray for their pastors.)Since it's Monday, here's some additional, very sad research cited by Mark Driscoll that points out areas beyond the post-preaching blues that pastors need to watch out for:

• Fifteen hundred pastors leave the ministry each month due to moral failure, spiritual burnout, or contention in their churches.
• Fifty percent of pastors' marriages will end in divorce.
• Eighty percent of pastors and eighty-four percent of their spouses feel unqualified and discouraged in their role as pastors.
• Fiftypercent of pastors are so discouraged that they would leave theministry if they could, but have no other way of making a living.
• Eightypercent of seminary and Bible school graduates who enter the ministrywill leave the ministry within the first five years.
• Seventy percent of pastors constantly fight depression.
• Almost forty percent polled said they have had an extra-marital affair since beginning their ministry.
• Seventy percent said the only time they spend studying the Word is when they are preparing their sermons.
• (Read entire article here)